The Bamboo Cocktail is a simple mixture of sherry, vermouth, and bitters. So is the Adonis, the Rosa, the New York Athletic Club, the Armour, the Arkwood, and the Harvard. Doubtless there are others. This profusion of sherry-vermouth drinks is due to the popularity of the Manhattan and the fact that the substitution of sherry for whisky in a cocktail as a way of keeping its intensity but significantly lowering its proof was one of the most useful, and used, items in the late-nineteenth-century bartender’s bag of tricks. The first of these drinks on record is the Adonis, created by Joseph F. McKone (1860–1914) of New York’s famous Hoffman House in 1884 or 1885 to celebrate the Broadway show of the same name. See Hoffman House. (As a point of trivia, it should be noted that Adonis, the first modern musical, opened in the Bijou Theater, which was formerly the Thomas Brothers’ saloon.) See Thomas, Jeremiah P. “Jerry”. The Bamboo is the second, recorded in 1886. According to San Francisco bartender and mixographer “Cocktail Bill” Boothby, writing in 1907, it was invented by Louis Eppinger (1830–1908), a German immigrant who kept a famous bar on Halleck Street in that city in the 1870s before decamping to Portland, Oregon, and then Yokohama, where he managed the Grand Hotel from 1890 until his death. See Boothby, William T. “Cocktail Bill” and Grand Hotel. On the other hand, in the 1890s the drink was sometimes known as the Boston Bamboo, which casts some doubt upon a San Francisco origin.
Historically, there was a great deal of variation in the styles of vermouth, sherry, and bitters used in these drinks and in their proportions, even when the name was the same. The earliest recorded version of the Bamboo, for instance, called for 3 parts sherry to 1 part vermouth, presumably sweet (as in most of the pre-Prohibition recipes), but most later versions used equal parts. In modern times, while proportions still vary, most mixologists make their Bamboos with dry vermouth, reserving the name “Adonis” for the sweet-vermouth version. Whatever the precise details, the combination of vermouth, sherry, and bitters, after virtually disappearing with American Prohibition, has come back strongly with the second wave of the modern cocktail revolution and its keen interest in the drink’s three component parts. See cocktail renaissance.
Recipe: Stir 45 ml ea. sherry and vermouth and 2 dashes orange bitters with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist lemon or orange peel over the top.
See also bitters; sherry; and vermouth.
Boothby, William T. The World’s Drinks and How to Mix Them. San Francisco: Pacific Buffet, 1908.
“Disturbing Sunday Drinks.” New Haven Register, July 27, 1885, 2.
“Poems in Cocktails.” St Paul Globe, September 16, 1886, 16.
Sanders, Dinah. The Art of the Shim. San Francisco: Sanders & Gratz, 2013.
“What Will It Be?” St Louis Post-Dispatch, October 22, 1893, 29.
By: David Wondrich